


Lead the Future In

by queenofchildren



Series: The Discovery of Kindness [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Let's build a society, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofchildren/pseuds/queenofchildren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seceding from your government to start your own society teaches you things.</p>
<p>Or, the story of how Bellamy gives Clarke a horse as a present. </p>
<p>(Companion piece to 'Smile, the worst is yet to come'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Won't you let me match your stride_

_I can slow down if you want to_

_We can handle it side by side_

_What do you say girl don't you want to_

 

It's two and a half months after they landed on earth, and what remains of the 100 are getting ready to move out, to move on from the Ark and leave behind them the society that deemed them expendable. Some of them have decided to stay at Camp Jaha with their families. A few others have managed to bring friends or parents into the fold, convince them that there's something better to be had out there than following a ruling class who have made it clear that the individual life has little value to them. More people than he expected have come to follow Clarke's promise that every life counts, that she'll fight like hell for each and every one of them. They've seen her being dragged into camp, covered in mud and bleeding from knife wounds and abrasions, exhausted and yet eager to move out again, to rescue not just the friends she had to leave behind but even the incarcerated grounders, who have attacked them since they got here, but who still, in her opinion, deserve better than to be drained of life in an underground prison.

Clearly, that kind of determination has left an impression: 70 people are standing by the gate waiting for their young leader to emerge from the station hull and start the trek eastwards to the sea. She's been busy all last night, helping her mother and Jackson treat a group of people who got injured when a hitherto undiscovered barrel of hydrazine exploded. That's why she's still packing, he finds out when he goes to check on her, teasing her about letting her people wait before they're even properly her people. That's just as well though, because it gives him the opportunity to hand her the packet, a small watertight bag filled with the most important medical supplies Abby managed to scrounge together from the Ark's dwindling stores.

When he holds out the bright red bag, she looks at it with a confused expression, head cocked to the side, and he has to tell her to look inside. She does, rummaging around with growing enthusiasm.

"Where did you get this stuff?“

"I asked your mother.“ And she made him promise to protect Clarke at all costs in exchange for the supplies, but of course that was already on his list of priorities – there's no way he's doing this leadership thing without her.

There's the hint of a frown forming on her face and he just knows she's going to find some reason to protest, so he explains:

"I figured you... we were going to need stuff like that.“

It's something they _will_ need at their new settlement, of course, but it's also his way of telling her that he's willing to think of the practical necessities as well, that she's not alone in this. And partly, the annoyingly honest voice in his head tells him, it's to make sure she'll really come, that she won't change her mind and stay with her mother and the relative safety of Camp Jaha and the promise of a place among the privileged, the decisionmakers. He's well aware of the irony of expecting her, who was as close to royalty as it gets up there, to leave all that behind just to try and make a new life out of nothing with the likes of him, delinquents and losers and blue-collar rabble-rousers. And still he trusts her to be on his side, to choose what they've achieved down here, what they could achieve again, over the old system, which was unfair and had no place for people like him but which made life much easier for people like her. He knows she's not one to take the easy way, that she'll choose justice over comfort every time. But a part of him is still scared, scared that she'll come to her senses and remember his many fuck-ups, his weaknesses, his selfish acts, and run in the other direction as fast as she can because there's no way anyone can even think of leading a people with someone like him.

And suddenly, he's too scared to find out if his gift – that could just as easily be called a bribe – works. He turns and makes for the door, trying not to think about what he'll do if she doesn't follow.

"Now hurry up and finish packing.“

He has only taken two steps when she catches his arm and stops him in his tracks.

"Thank you, Bellamy.“

She stuffs the med pack in her already bulging backpack, shoulders it and starts to walk past him.

"Well come on then, let's not keep them waiting.“ She says it as if he was the reason for the delay and he's ready to argue the point before he catches himself and grins. It seems like they've fallen back into their old rhythm before they've even left, and that, he thinks, is a promising start to this endeavour.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This works with the same events and timeline as 'Smile, the worst is yet to come', but it shows things from Bellamy's perspective and is more focused on singular events, so if you want more background, you should read 'Smile' (aren't I clever?).  
> The lyrics are from Greg Laswell's 'I'd be lying'.


	2. Chapter 2

It's four months after landing, and Bellamy has found out Clarke's one weakness: She's constantly cold. Sure, so is almost everyone else, but somehow the cold seems to hit her more. He thinks it might be because she keeps giving away her food rations to the younger kids, so he sits her down after a few days of this and tells her very sternly that she is to eat everything she is allotted to keep up her strength or he will tie her down and force-feed her himself. She huffs at the threat but complies, and while that's a relief, it doesn't really seem to help with the cold.

Maybe it's because most of the others have duties like chopping wood, building and hunting, whereas she is mostly stationary when she prepares medicine, treats the sick and injured, or convenes with him and the rest of her council on urgent matters. And when she's not sitting at her little table in the draughty, makeshift common hall they've erected, she's walking around camp checking on everyone or going out foraging for medicinal herbs, which means she's exposed to the cold but not physically active enough to ward it off. They have a fire burning in the main building, and Bellamy has taken her new assistant aside and told him sternly that one of his duties is to make sure the fire never goes out. But they're still busy building and can't afford to spend too much time and energy chopping wood just for heating, and so it's a small fire, hardly enough to do more than keep water from freezing.

So he watches her shuffling around camp in her torn-up jacket and threadbare shirt, teeth chattering, lips blue, shivering from head to toe, and decides that this needs to stop, if only because they can't afford to lose their leader and doctor to pneumonia in the middle of winter. The hunters have already used the pelts of their kills to make vests, hats and scarves, quickly becoming the most popular people in camp, but no one has thought to make something for her, who is too busy doing every-fucking-thing for them. So he leaves his hunters to do their work without him for once and sets off on an expedition himself.

He spends two days pursuing the panther through the woods and another four cleaning and drying the pelt and sewing it into a vest, ribbing up strands of his own sweater to make the thread and risking her wrath by stealing one of her precious suturing needles.

He tries to surreptitiously put it back before handing her the gift, but she returns earlier than expected and catches him. He hasn't really thought about what to say when he gives her the vest anyway, so he just holds it out like a shield when she starts ranting about abuse of medical ressources. It shuts her up immediately, and he files that away for future reference, even though the effect doesn't last very long.

"What is that?“

"It's a vest. To keep you from freezing to death.“ Her eyes light up.

"Do we have enough pelts to make these for everyone?“ Of course she's not just going to take it, bloody selfless as she is. No, she has to make sure first that every one of these idiots is warm and snug, even if she freezes stiff in the meantime.

"Not yet. We will if we keep hunting enough, but this was the first big animal I got in good enough condition.“

He knows what she'll say next before she even opens her mouth.

"I can't take this. Not as long as the others are still freezing.“

"You can and you will. For one thing, none of the others are quite as cold as you seem to be all the time, mostly because none of them gave away half their clothes to others.“ Her eyes widen in surprise. "Yeah, I've noticed. Secondly, most of the others have chores that keep them warm, whereas you are mostly in that ice chamber of a meeting hall. And third, you're our medic. If you die, we all die.“

Without waiting for her to come up with another counter-argument, he holds the vest out for her to slip into and she does, hesitantly. The vest is to be worn with the leather on the outside and the smooth, warm pelt on the inside, and he has made sure to attach a high collar that now comes to rest against the bare skin of her neck. She closes her eyes at the sensation, just taking it in for a few seconds. Then she opens her eyes again and smiles.

"Thank you.“

When she hugs him, he can feel the shivering already subsiding. Maybe he'll catch some hares tomorrow, they'd make fine mittens...

He suddenly remembers reading about midwinter celebrations on earth before the war, like the religious Christmas holiday, and he thinks that maybe they were on to something. Giving gifts certainly helps ward off the darkness of winter, if only because they make people smile, and there's nothing quite as bright and warm as her smile.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It's six months after landing, and in the morning after a wonderful feast for the envoy from the Ark and a terrible fight with Clarke, Bellamy sits by the fire with a raging hangover and lets his sister trick him into admitting that maybe, just maybe, him being an ass to Clarke last night may have been because he was jealous.

The rational side of him knew all along that she was just being friendly to their Ark visitors, that diplomacy is vital to their interactions with all of their neighbours, but he's never been good at listening to his rational side, especially when it comes to her. And he could swear she was singling one of them out, laughing a little too much at the handsome engineer's jokes even for a welcoming diplomatic hostess. Octavia tells him he was being silly, that everyone can see Wick only has eyes for Raven, but it wouldn't be the first time the mechanic and the medic have shown the same taste in men. In hindsight, he realises he probably shouldn't have said as much to Clarke, because that's when all hell broke lose.

He doesn't remember every word that was said last night, but enough to know it was bad. After Clarke tried every possible tactic of defusing the situation – pretending not to listen, trying to make it into a joke – and he refused each and every offer of getting out of this with his dignity intact, she told him exactly what she thought of him monitoring her interactions with male visitors, and she did not hold back. Neither did he, bringing up everything from Finn to the boy who almost died of hypothermia the month before because he went out alone to look for some plants Clarke mentioned needing and got lost in a thunderstorm. It's wrong of him to say these things, because it's not her fault those boys were being idiots, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her the real reason he wishes the only man she ever smiles at was him. Eventually, she slapped him and stormed off, which he definitely deserved.

Clearly, he was drunker last night than he remembers. He thinks he only had two cups of moonshine the entire evening, which Monty has started diluting with water and a sirup made from berries and sweet roots so it's not quite as strong and slightly more palatable. But this morning, he feels like he drank the whole barrel himself: His head is pounding, his hands are cold and clammy even as he feels like he's burning up, and his vision keeps going blurry.

It's only when he finds himself lying on the floor by the fire, Octavia kneeling by his side and desperately yelling out for someone to fetch Clarke that he thinks that maybe this might be more than just a bad hangover.

When he comes to again, it's dark and he's lying on a soft surface, every bone in his body aching, his skin burning up and his mouth tasting like it did that first time Monty made him try a sip of ominously mud-green liquor during his experimental phase, of earth and rot. But none of it matters because there's a cool hand on his overheated forehead, and a soft voice is singing about... horses?

He listens for a bit, the melody hauntingly familiar:

"Hush-a-by, don't you cry, go to sleep, little baby. And when you wake, you shall have, all the pretty little horses. Dapples and Greys, Pintos and Bays - all the pretty little horses. So hush-a-by, don't you cry, go to sleep, little baby.“

He decides since the voice is asking so nicely, he'll ignore being sung to like an infanct and just go back to sleep for a bit.

The next time he wakes up, Octavia is sitting next to him. He asks her about the song she sang last night and she tells him that she was out on watch, but Clarke was with him the whole time until the fever broke in the early hours of the morning.

During the next few days, Clarke only stops by shortly to check on him, her voice hard and clipped when she asks him how he's doing, and he feels like an ass every time he remembers the hurtful things he said to her and her gentle lullaby when she thought he was asleep.

The moment he's recovered enough to stand up, he knows what he has to do.

His apology is shit; mumbled and vague, but she takes the new knife he holds out to her anyway, and they never mention the fight again. And really, he thinks, the most important thing shouldn't be who she smiles at, but that she smiles at all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lullaby is the same one Clarke sings to Atom in Season 1, which is a little morbid I guess, but I imagine it's simply the only lullaby she remembers being sung by her dad, and so it's what she goes for when she needs something comforting.


	4. Chapter 4

It's ten months after landing, and Bellamy has just discovered a new and unbelievably delicious type of berry. He finally managed to get away from camp for a bit to properly bathe after what must have been weeks of hastily washing with a bucket of water. He even asked Monty for some of the shampoo he has concocted out of herbs that has made him very popular with the female population of the camp. It is on this trip that he stumbles across the small, leafy plants bearing pale red fruits.

Having learned from his encounter with the hallucinatory nuts, he shows one to Lincoln before trying it, who assures him they're called strawberries and perfectly edible. Unfortunately, they seem to be quite rare and small in the forest, and rather hard to spot, growing in little clusters under bushes. So he doesn't tell anyone about them but takes a little woven basket and sets out again to fill it.

When he's done, he feels a flicker of doubt, because he hasn't given her anything since his apology gift after their big fight, and things have shifted between them since then, leaving him unsure where they stand. When he first noticed the feeling, he tried to fight it: Telling himself his jealousy was only a general interest in their doctor's mental wellbeing, trying to dial down the casual touches they exchange throughout the day, and even trying (not very successfully) to restrain himself from kissing her at Raven's impromptu welcome-party.

That one was really close, not least because he's not even sure who initiated the almost-kiss – if anyone initiated it at all, or if they just finally gave in to the tension that seems to be between them at all times, drawing them together almost irresistibly. He panicked and took another girl to his tent that night, only to learn that you can't exorcise attraction. He refuses to use any other word to describe what he's feeling for his co-leader, because it's Clarke, for heaven's sake. The last thing she needs is for him to... It's best not to indulge those kinds of thoughts, he reminds himself, but he still falls asleep to the image of her smile and her eyes and her hair and her curves and wakes up tense and grumpy.

But now he tells himself that that can't go on forever, and that it would be kind of unfair for him to keep great things like strawberries from her just because his overactive libido has somehow imprinted on her. She has had a terrible few weeks, and she deserves this. If that makes things a little awkward for him, so be it. Back at the camp, he hides his bounty under a fresh batch of seaweed and brings it into Clarke's brand new healer's practice, but finds he needn't have bothered as she is in there alone.

He didn't plan for anything that happens next, he honestly just wanted to treat her to something nice after the horrors of the past weeks. But her hands are soaked in blood and seaweed ointment from her last patient, and he's too impatient to wait for her to walk over to the creek and wash properly, so he just holds one of the strawberries up and orders her to eat it. She doesn't normally react well to being ordered around, but she obeys for once, maybe too exhausted to protest. He smiles for a moment when she catches the fruit from his fingers with her teeth, marvelling at the fact that she trusts him so implicitly by now.

Then the smile freezes on his face and he realises he did not think this through. Because he has seen her react to pleasant experiences before – the first sun-rays of spring, a particularly tasty venison stew, the first night she tried out Monty's idea of fending off the cold by putting hot stones from the fireplace at the foot end of their sleeping pallets – and he knows by now what it does to him. Because Clarke doesn't just enjoy sensory pleasures, she savours them with her whole body and makes him obsessively imagine ways to make her look the way she does now: her eyes closing and her head tilting back, exposing her throat as she lets out a long, low moan.

He almost squishes the strawberry he's already holding up in his hand as tension coils through his body. If she sees what she's doing to him right now, how close he is to sweeping all her medical stuff off the table, hoisting her on there and...

She opens her eyes, looks at him, and she knows. He can see it in the way her eyes widen and her mouth opens on a surprised exhale. It's quite a sight, as far as things to see right before your death go. Because he has no doubt that she'll slap the goddamned strawberry out of his hand and throttle him in about two seconds.

To his shock, she does no such thing. Holding his gaze, she steps closer instead and opens her mouth, a silent request for more. And God, does he ever want to obey. He pushes the strawberry past her lips with trembling hands and watches as she bites down, her expression softening immediately the way it did before. She doesn't close her eyes this time or moan out loud, but she makes a soft humming sound that is somehow even worse, because it shows that she tried to restrain herself and failed.

That does it for him. He has learned by now that there are not a lot of things that will make her lower her defenses and let herself go, so he'll take this chance before it passes. Before he knows what he's doing, he's pulled her against him, hoping he doesn't hurt her when he crushes her into his chest, and kisses her, hard.

Things after that are kind of a blur – a delicious, wonderful, maddening blur that feels like he's stepped into a parallel universe where nothing and no one exists except for him and Clarke, who tastes like strawberries of course, the taste jarring with the sharp smell of alcohol and seaweed paste that always lingers around her. But who cares about taste and smell when he can feel her, every soft curve and strong limb pressed against him as she draws herself up on her toes and grabs hold of his his shirt in a clear (and very satisfying) attempt to get closer. She feels like a dream come true, he marvels absently, like a gift he doesn't deserve. And because life doesn't tend to hold too many good things in store for him, he greedily tries to taste as much of her as he can, not trusting this miracle not to slip through his fingers again any second.

And it does, of course, when they are interrupted by Jasper, who unsettles Clarke enough to make her break away from him and chase after their friend to make sure he doesn't tell anyone about what he saw.

He catches up with her just in time to see her slam poor Jasper into a wall as she orders him to stay silent, and he can't help but feel a little offended. Is she that embarrassed by what just happened?

Of course she is, a malicious voice inside his head whispers, one that has been with him ever since he got his mother killed and his sister locked up, that has been triumphant every time he fucked something up, worthless coward that he is. Lately, he's been less and less inclined to listen to the voice – after all, most of the people who have entrusted him with their lives are still alive, his sister included, so he can't be doing that bad of a job. And most importantly, that voice gets drowned out every time Clarke smiles at him, nods approvingly at one of his ideas, or tells him that he did well, that he's important. But seeing her now, so unsettled by an event that he was just about to classify as one of the best moments of his life, he is inclined to go back to believing in his own worthlessness.

Until she turns and looks at him, and he sees her expression. All the traces of what just happened are still there – her flushed cheeks, tousled hair, dark eyes – but mostly, there's something he doesn't see on her often: Fear. Not contempt, or embarrassment, or the warm, pitying smile she'd put on if she wanted to let him down gently, but fear that tells him she knows something momentous has happened, and she has no idea how to deal with it.

He's about to step closer, to tell her that they'll figure it out, when she turns and runs.

And, alright, it's not exactly flattering to have a girl literally run away from you after you kissed her breathless, but it is certainly not everyone who manages to scare the imperturbable Clarke Griffin. So, whatever else she thinks about the encounter, it didn't leave her cold. He can't help but grin in triumph at the realisation as he walks back to the camp's main fire. Now he only has to figure out a way to convince her to let him get through her defenses on a regular basis.

Bellamy spends the rest of the day in an excellent mood, and every time he sees the familiar flash of blond somewhere around camp (always carefully very far away from him) he feels joy bubble up within him again. It is only much later in the day, after he's received several weird looks, that Bellamy looks down at his shirt and realises there's a clear, reddish-green handprint in the middle of his chest.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It's a year after landing, and the entire village is getting ready to celebrate the anniversary of their first day on earth. In addition to the planned feast, Bellamy has decided that Clarke should be honoured especially on this day, because she took up responsibility for a hundred lives while everyone else was still busy frolicking through the woods.

Not that he has been able to express this thought to her. To say that things have been weird between them since what Bellamy thinks of as 'the strawberry incident' would be an understatement. While it helped him admit that there's no point any more in trying to deny the fact that he's head over heels in love with his co-leader, Clarke is apparently taking a lot longer to process everything. She's been avoiding him, sending messages through the others whenever possible, and he has to try very hard to stay patient. Clarke may need time to figure it out, but everything from her reaction during the event to the way she's been watching him since then to a million other things have made him convinced that he's right, that there's something between them that has the potential to be... more.

Sure, the kiss itself may have just been pent-up tension and the fact that, as far as he knows, she hasn't been with anyone since they got here. But there are other things, and there's no way he can have imagined it all: the looks and touches that linger a little too long. The fact that the one time he took a girl to his tent, after Raven's impromptu welcome party, she was standoffish with him for two weeks until the girl got back together with her ex. He'd guess that she's scared, both for herself and for the camp, of what will happen if she allows _them_ to happen. She's been hurt before, lost people before.

So Bellamy doesn't push her even though he is starting to accept that there's nothing he wants more than a repeat of the strawberry incident, preferably without a guest appearance by Jasper. But more than that, he misses her, as a friend rather than just a co-leader, someone to talk to in few or many words. And so when he stumbles upon another miracle in the woods, Bellamy doesn't think twice.

He tells himself, as always, that it's not a gift so much as something she really needs. After all, Grounders are led by women and as such only accept women as their diplomatic envoys, so it's Clarke who sets out to barter trade negotiations and peace treaties, with Lincoln as her guide and Octavia or Monroe as her second, and he stays behind so the camp isn't leaderless if something happens to her. So far, most of those meetings have been a success, all of them in the sense that she returned from them alive and well (and once, hilariously, high as a kite on some grounder concoction that the clan leader made her drink, for tradition). But that doesn't mean that he doesn't go sick with worry every time she's gone. He spends the entire time during her absences pacing the camp and yelling at people for the most insignificant reasons, and everyone ends up praying she'll be back soon.

A horse will no doubt speed up the process – she'd make the trip there and back in less than half the time. She'd also be able to transport goods if there is trading involved, and who knows, maybe it will impress the grounders. All in all, a good, sensible present fit for the leader of the Sky People.

But deep down he knows that's not the only reason he thinks that this is the perfect gift, the reason he's been chasing after the damn horse for days and very secretly enlisted Lincoln to help him catch and tame it.

He remembers Clarke telling him about the first time she saw a horse, during that first, fateful meeting with Anya's grounders. She told him the story by the campfire one night shortly after they left Camp Jaha. It had been a particularly tough day, the third in a row without a successful hunt and the first night of severe frost, and they had both been exhausted. But when Clarke recalled the memory of seeing a horse for the first time her face lit up, the worried edges softening for a moment to be replaced with almost childlike wonder.

The expression was so unexpected and so beautiful that he could only stare at her, soaking up every detail and committing it to memory. It's part of the reason why he loves giving her things so much, because it makes that look reappear: eyes wide, worried frown smoothing out, smile bright and uninhibited. The expression has gotten less rare with every month they survived, but she's still much more likely to look worried. That alone, Bellamy thinks, is reason enough to do everything in his power to make her happy, including but not limited to taming a horse as a present.

That Clarke kisses him when she has recovered from her surprise is an unexpected but very welcome bonus.

  

_Won't you let me be your man_

_I'm strong enough you know that I can_

_Be the one to ease your mind_

_Ease your mind_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this story is finished too, yay! I dragged this out far too long because I got distracted by other plot ideas. I'm thinking about doing one more instalment for this series, a collection of little moments I mentioned in this fic and its companion piece, 'Smile, the worst is yet to come' - sort of like outtakes.


End file.
